1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a multimedia message service in a mobile communication system and, more particularly to a method and system for managing multimedia messages in a mobile communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Presently, mobile terminals have advanced beyond merely being telephones and now integrate various additional functions. Particularly, it is common for mobile terminal to include a digital camera, and provide various music and movie functions. Further, to meet the increasing demand for such additional functions, mobile communication systems now offer a multimedia messaging service (MMS) that delivers multimedia content as a message between mobile terminals. For example, the multimedia messages may include photographs, movies, music, etc.
Multimedia messages delivered using MMS are generally big in size. Accordingly, individual users of mobile terminals have to selectively store multimedia messages in a data storage server such as a multimedia message box (MM box) linked to a multimedia messaging service center (MMSC). If necessary, they can download the stored multimedia messages or transmit them to any recipient terminal. Generally, peer-to-peer transmission using an MMS protocol is used to send multimedia messages to the MMS box. This transmission, however, is a simple data upload technology that unconditionally forwards and sequentially stores the multimedia messages, without sorting the messages in different directories.
Therefore, it may be difficult for users to manage the multimedia messages stored in such a manner. Accordingly, it is necessary to provide an improved method for management of multimedia messages.